


Even Though It All Went Wrong

by Keira_63



Series: The Minor Fall, The Major Lift [7]
Category: BBC Sherlock, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drug Addiction, Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, F/M, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Love, Major Character Injury, POV Molly Hooper, Part of the Minor Fall Major Lift series, Spoilers for His Last Vow, Spoilers up to series 3 episode 3, Story titles taken from the song Hallelujah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:54:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25047220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keira_63/pseuds/Keira_63
Summary: Everything goes very wrong and Molly wonders if this really is the end.
Relationships: Molly Hooper & Mary Morstan, Sherlock Holmes & Molly Hooper, Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper, pre-Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper - Relationship
Series: The Minor Fall, The Major Lift [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/68601
Comments: 4
Kudos: 41





	Even Though It All Went Wrong

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Sherlock is a TV series created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat and based on the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I do not own any of it. Any dialogue you recognise comes from series 3 episode 3.
> 
> This is the seventh part in a series spanning from pre-series until post series 3. It was inspired by lyrics from the song Hallelujah - the series title and each story title is a line, or part of a line, from the song. This part is set during 3x3 His Last Vow.

Molly wasn’t worried.

She _wasn’t_.

Except she really was.

It had taken her a little while to realise it had been some time since had seen Sherlock.

She had been distracted by her break-up with Tom and the guilt she still felt about breaking the heart of a truly nice guy. It was for the best, though. Tom deserved to be loved properly and Molly just couldn’t do that.

Still, she realised eventually that Sherlock hadn’t been to the morgue for a case in weeks. At first she thought it might have a been some sort of response to John and Mary getting married, but she really was beginning to panic a little.

She had called Mrs Hudson, who admitted she hadn’t seen Sherlock in weeks either. Now, Molly was tempted to call Greg and see if he had seen Sherlock recently.

In the end, she didn’t need to do that.

Sherlock came to her. Not willingly, not happily, and not under his own power.

No, John dragged Sherlock into her lab for a drug test.

And Molly felt her heart break a little bit.

\----------

“Well, is he clean?” John asked.

“Clean?” she hissed, not even trying to hide the fury in her voice.

She’d thought it was over after rehab. Sherlock had experienced his share of danger nights, especially in the aftermath of his swan dive from the roof of St Bart’s, but he’d never succumbed to his addiction after he’d left rehab.

And now here he was, appearing almost entirely unbothered by the fact that Molly’s tests had just shown an incredibly varied cocktail of drugs in his system.

 _Don’t cry, Molly_ , her mind whispered, _don’t cry, don’t cry_.

She didn’t cry. She smacked Sherlock Holmes in the face. Three times.

“How dare you throw away the beautiful gifts you were born with,” she told him angrily, “and how dare you betray the love of your friends. Say you’re sorry.”

“Sorry your engagement’s over, though I’m fairly grateful for the lack of a ring.”

He was lashing out, she knew, the way he often did when he felt guilty. She wasn’t letting him off the hook, though, not for this.

“Stop it. Just stop it.”

She turned away from him. She loved him, damnit, but she couldn’t look at him right now.

She heard him say to John that it had been for a case and she almost snorted. He was so, _so_ clever – surely he could have figured something out that didn’t necessitate him going back down this road.

Everyone in the room was talking, but Molly wasn’t listening any more. She needed to get away from Sherlock. Despite how angry she was, she did still want to help him, but she didn’t think she could bear to see him with the drugs so fresh in his system.

She slipped out of the room without either Sherlock or John noticing. Mary gave her a sympathetic smile as she left but Molly didn’t have the heart to do anything but nod.

She was in tears the moment she reached an empty bathroom.

* * *

The drugs were the first bombshell and it was hard enough to deal with that.

When Mary called to say Sherlock had been shot, Molly sank down to the floor, clutching the phone to her ear, and thought she might be having a panic attack.

She could barely comprehend Mary’s repeated assurances that Sherlock was alive. All she could think about was Sherlock, pale and still, lying on a table in the morgue.

 _Oh god, I’m going to be sick_.

She barely made it to the bathroom before she started retching. She coughed, spluttered and then just began sobbing.

“I’m coming over,” she heard Mary say down the phone, “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

\----------

When Mary arrived Molly was, not exactly better, but slightly less of a mess than she had been previously.

“Tell me the truth,” she demanded as soon as Mary sat down next to her on the sofa, “how bad is it?”

“Pretty bad,” Mary admitted, “it was touch and go for a while, but he got lucky, though I’m not sure I’ve ever known luck to look like that.”

“When can I see him?” she asked.

“He’s in surgery at the moment,” Mary told her, “John’s waiting for news. Give it a few hours and we’ll have a better idea.”

“I slapped him,” Molly whispered, “that was pretty much the last thing I did to him. And now he’s almost …”

Mary wrapped a comforting arm around her, “he deserved it at the time, the git, and he knew it.”

“He texted me a bit after the drug test,” Molly admitted, “and I just ignored him until he stopped.”

“He really was sorry, I think,” Mary said, “he’d probably have kept on texting, but I told him to give you a bit of space.”

Molly couldn’t help the wry smile that crept onto her face, “he can be impatient sometimes, and he does hate to be ignored.”

“You’ve known him for a long time, haven’t you?” Mary asked.

“Ages. Since uni … I thought the worst was over when he went to rehab, and then after Moriarty.”

Mary gave her another one-armed hug, “go and have a nap,” she suggested, “I’ll stay here and call you in a few hours so we can go to the hospital together.”

Molly nodded, suddenly exhausted, “yeah, that sounds good. Just promise you’ll wake me if there’s any news.”

“Of course,” Mary agreed.

After telling Mary to help herself to anything in the kitchen, Molly dragged herself into her room and crawled into bed.

She was dozing off in minutes.

\----------

Sherlock was asleep when she first visited. Properly asleep, not just faking it (she knew the difference by now, after years of observing him).

She left Mary and John sitting with him and went downstairs for her shift in the morgue, hoping he might be awake when she finished for the day.

Mike had offered to let her have a few days off, since she never got round to using all her holiday allowance. She appreciated it, but declined – it was easier if she worked, because then she couldn’t worry incessantly.

When she checked the news online during her break, she was shocked to see that Sherlock was a headline story … and not because of the shooting.

As it turned out, Sherlock had been hiding a lot more than a lapse into drugs and a mysterious investigation that had nearly gotten him killed.

It wasn’t that she believed it all. Most of the interviews Janine had given were clearly padded out with absolute rubbish designed to make shocking headlines. Some of it, though, some of it seemed like it was true.

Molly remembered the spark of jealousy she had felt when she had seen Sherlock and Janine together at John and Mary’s wedding. It was stronger now, and it hurt more, because this wasn’t just a smile or a dance, this was a _relationship_.

Part of her wanted to avoid Sherlock for as long as possible, but the other part had to know what was real and what wasn’t. She had no real claim on Sherlock, but she wanted answers anyway.

She went up to visit after her shift was over, thankful to find that neither John nor Mary were there.

Sherlock looked to be sound asleep, but she quickly discerned he was just trying to avoid conversation.

Molly sat down next to him, “I know you’re awake, Sherlock.”

No movement. She rolled her eyes, “I can tell when you’re faking sleep, Sherlock, you know this.”

He opened his eyes slowly, “hello, Molly.”

He sounded tired, his voice weaker than usual. It made her heart clench as she remembered how close she had come to losing him.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Like I was shot and nearly died,” he snarked back.

He must have seen the sorrow and distress flit across her face, because he murmured a sheepish, mumbled apology she only barely managed to hear.

“So,” she said with false brightness, “you didn’t tell us you had a girlfriend.”

Sherlock pinked slightly, looking embarrassed in a way she rarely saw from him, “it was for a case.”

Inside her head, a small Molly began celebrating. On the outside, however, Molly frowned. The idea that Sherlock had started a relationship to help solve a case was completely believable, but it was certainly possible he would have done so without actually letting Janine know it was all a ruse.

Molly knew what it was like to have her feelings stomped on by Sherlock, even if she was fairly sure it was usually unintentional. She felt bad for Janine, although the woman had clearly got her own back with the newspaper articles.

“How long do you have to stay here?” she asked, doing him the favour of changing the subject.

“They want to keep me for observation,” he said, rather indignantly, “I said I could recuperate quite well at Baker Street but they refused to let me leave – this situation has Mycroft’s high-handed fingerprints all over it.”

“You nearly _died_ , Sherlock,” she reminded him, “you have to let yourself heal properly.”

He harrumphed sulkily, but soon perked up when she started telling him about the different cases she’d been dealing with recently. Straightforward deaths bored him but they sometimes played a game where she gave him the post-mortem details for a patient and he guessed what had killed them.

She stayed for two hours, until the rumbling of her stomach reminded her she needed to get herself and her cat Toby fed.

Sherlock seemed reluctant to see her go, although she assumed his behaviour was only because he had no one else to entertain him at the moment.

She promised to visit again soon, though, and his short but sincere answer of “good” made her smile widely for half an hour afterwards.

It would all be ok soon, she hoped.

Molly should have remembered that bad news came in threes.

* * *

Molly was half-asleep on the settee, an old episode of _Glee_ playing on the TV, when John called.

“Sherlock’s escaped.”

“What!” she shouted, knocking her glass of water over in shock as she sat bolt upright and then swearing loudly.

“Out the bloody window of his hospital room,” John fumed.

She knew Sherlock absolutely should not have been moving around normally, let alone climbing out of windows. Just imagining all the ways he could get himself re-injured with this stunt made her panic rise.

“I need to know if Sherlock has any bolt-holes you know of,” John continued.

“Err, right,” she replied, “Parliament Hill, Dagmar Court, the Blind Greenhouse at Kew Gardens, behind the clock-face of Big Ben –”

“What, seriously?” John asked, “that wasn’t a joke?”

“Not a joke,” she confirmed, “there are more, but those are the only ones I can remember. Apart from my spare bedroom. Well, _my_ bedroom,” she admitted, “we agreed he needs the space.”

“Thanks, Molly. I’ll call you as soon as we have any news, I promise.”

He put for the phone down and she forgave him the abrupt end to the conversation because she wanted them to find Sherlock as soon as possible.

She thought about going out looking for him herself, but she knew John, Greg and Mary would get to the other bolt-holes before she could, and it was obvious he hadn’t decided to come to her flat.

Better to wait at home, she thought, at least in this case.

\----------

John called a few hours later to say they’d found Sherlock and he was back in hospital.

It was odd, though. Normally Sherlock was happy to boast about a case, but he remained tight-lipped regarding this one, as did John and Mary, while Greg and Mrs Hudson seemed as clueless as Molly was.

And then there was a further shock – John and Mary had gone, almost overnight, from a happily married couple to a pair who barely spoke.

Mary’s pregnancy progressed and Molly visited her often, but she never saw John around. Mary refused to reveal what had happened, and only said wistfully that she hoped things would be sorted out soon.

Molly didn’t know exactly how to feel.

In some ways things progressed as normal. She went to work and saw Sherlock and John when they came in with Greg for cases. Occasionally Sherlock would turn up on his own looking for body parts or wanting to use the lab. She and Mary went out for lunch and shopping for baby clothes.

Still, there was something between Sherlock, John and Mary that she couldn’t figure out. _Something_ had happened but she didn’t know what and no one responded to her questions.

There was only so much she could do. She only hoped things improved between Mary and John before the baby was born.

* * *

The run-up to Christmas was hectic for Molly, distracted as she had been with worries about Sherlock, Mary and John. It was a good thing she didn’t have many people to buy presents for, because she ended up doing a lot of last-minute shopping.

She was working Christmas Day. She didn’t really mind – Mrs Hudson was spending time with her gentleman friend, while Sherlock, John and Mary were all going to visit Sherlock’s parents (a little odd, since she knew he tended to avoid family visits, but it would hopefully be good for him), so all she had planned was to meet up with Greg on Boxing Day for a curry and catch-up.

It was a pleasant surprise when Sherlock turned up at the morgue, just before he was meant to leave, with a wrapped present for her.

Christmas presents had always been a sporadic thing for Sherlock. She got him one every year, without fail. He didn’t tend to reciprocate (mostly, she thought, because he forgot about it) but when he did the gift was always something that suited her perfectly.

“Thank you,” she smiled widely at him, intrigued to know what the gift was, “did you get mine – I left it with Mrs Hudson because you weren’t there when I stopped by.”

He nodded, “a new Bunsen Burner and more test tubes will be of great use to me, and I believe there may also be a promise for some fingers inside the card?”

“Toes,” she laughed, completely unsurprised that he had deduced his present already.

“There’s always something,” he sighed.

“Are you staying?” she asked, unsure if he was planning on checking on any of his experiments.

He shook his head, “the drawn-out torture of a family Christmas awaits.”

“Have a good time,” she smiled.

“Highly unlikely,” he muttered.

He paused for a few seconds, looking a little unsure, before he ducked his head and kissed her quickly on the cheek, “Merry Christmas, Molly.”

He was gone before any response escaped her, leaving her with a flushed face and not quite able to believe what had just happened and why Sherlock had behaved so out of character.

* * *

She found the folded piece of paper on the floor just inside her door when she got home after her long, exhausting Christmas Day shift and she immediately felt herself tense.

There were only two words scribbled on the paper in handwriting she immediately recognised as Sherlock’s.

 _I’m sorry_.

She dropped the sheet like it had burned her. Sherlock had said those words to her a few times out loud, most of the time genuinely. He had never written them down, though. Even odder was the fact that the note had been shoved under her door – Sherlock had a spare key she had given him years ago and he would have had no compunction about using it to leave her the note.

So Sherlock had written it, but someone else had delivered it.

Something was wrong. Very, _very_ wrong.

She vaguely remembered seeing some breaking news story on the news feed on her phone, but she’d been dead on her feet and not inclined to depress herself by reading more terrible stories, especially not on Christmas Day.

Now she hurried over to the TV and flicked to the first news programme she could find. It was all over the headlines – Charles Augustus Magnussen was dead. No other useful information seemed available at the moment, which made Molly nervous. What on earth could Sherlock have to do with Magnussen’s death?

Unfortunately, any thoughts on the subject were driven right out of her head when the picture on the TV screen flickered and changed.

Suddenly, she wasn’t watching BBC News. Instead, Jim Moriarty’s face was grinning out at her.

_Did you miss me? Did you miss me? Did you miss me? Did you miss me?_

Molly screamed.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed it.
> 
> Sorry for the cliffhanger. The next part should hopefully be out in a week or so - I've got quite a bit of it written already.


End file.
